One of ACKS’ default assumptions is that “political power is personal power” and vice versa. This blog post explains the reasoning behind the notion:
http://www.autarch.co/blog/political-power-personal-power-or-why-julius-caesar-had-70-hit-points
In TV Tropes terms, ACKS assumes that Authority Equals Asskicking and Asskicking Equals Authority. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AuthorityEqualsAsskicking
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AsskickingEqualsAuthority
You can attempt to run a game where these rules don’t hold, but you’ll need to revise the demographics, campaign XP, and many other rules. It’s a lot of work!